Countess Elizabeth Bathory has achieved legendary status thanks to her habits in the early 1600's in Hungary. Bathory was in her 40's when she thought that she discovered the secret of youth by bathing in the blood of young virgins. Her reign of terror has often been compared to the activities of Vlad The Impaler and some say her tale was even incorporated into Bram Stoker's Dracula. This is the Hammer Films take on the legend and it provides for an entertaining but slightly restrained telling.

The beautiful Ingrid Pitt stars as Countess Elisabeth, an older lady whose husband has recently died leaving her to live in the castle with her servant/lover Captain Dobi (Nigel Green), a strapping young man named Imre Toth (Sandor Eles from And Soon The Darkness), an old Merlin-looking resident, and a variety of servants. As in the legend, Elisabeth accidentally cuts a servant girl and discovers that her skin is smoother than a baby's bottom when the girl's blood splashes on her face. After a small helping of murder, Elisabeth drains the girl's life force and reverses her age by thirty years. This leads to an affair with the Imre after Elisabeth leads him to believe that she is her own daughter. A variety of problems present themselves when Dobi gets jealous, Elisabeth discovers that she needs fresh blood every few days, and the practice of living the life of both a mother and a daughter proves to be a difficult thing to balance. Add to that the fact that the real daughter (Lesley-Anne Down) is being held captive in a country cottage and the townsfolk are getting concerned about the missing women and you get a maniac obsessed with youth and beauty trying to maintain her looks while tensions all around her rise.

I have always been interested in the legend of Bathory and was pleased to find a feature film on the story. The only other movie version I have seen is in a segment of Walerian Borowczyk's Immoral Tales which does not offer a lot of narrative. If anyone could make a film about such a bizarre woman in the period of horses and wenches, it was Hammer Films circa 1970 and I thought they did a fantastic job. Pitt revels as both a young and old woman in her character showing both the joy of being young again and the dangerous obsession of staying that way. Nigel Green also turned in a great performance as Dodi as he was trying to please the woman he loved while simultaneously being torn apart by jealousy at her interest in the young Toth. The usual Hammer cleavage is abundantly on display as well as nude scenes from Pitt and Andrea Lawrence.

In a day where celebrities are using face cream made from foreskin, I wonder if the blood baths of the Countess are going to become socially acceptable in the coming decades. Director Peter Sarsdy made a number of films for Hammer including Taste The Blood Of Dracula. (Josh Pasnak, 4/6/05)

Directed By: Peter Sasdy.
Written By: Jeremy Paul.

Starring: Ingrid Pitt, Nigel Green, Sandor Eles, Maurice Denham.